Shakespeare in Performance: Film
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1983, Don Taylor)
| Title | The Two Gentlemen of Verona |
|---|---|
| Year | 1983 |
| Release Locations | GB |
| Director | Don Taylor |
| Medium | Color video |
| Length | 2 hrs, 15 mins |
| Languages | English |
| Audience | college and university general public high school |
| Play Connections | The Two Gentlemen of Verona (interpretation) |
| Series | The Shakespeare Plays |
Description
Director Don Taylor saw the 'contemporaneousness' of the play as the single most formidable obstacle to presenting it to twentieth-century audiences (Fenwick, q.v., below). The fashions of Shakespeare's time, particularly the vogue for the 'Italianate,' are hardly the central concerns of modern youths who worship, or at least are professed by the media to worship, rock video, T-shirts, jeans, and Michael Jackson. The social currency of young people in Shakespeare's day dealt in the coinage of the courtly/pastoral tradition: sonnets, bracelets of bright hair about the bone, and shepherdesses. These are lost discourses that must be accommodated to modern audiences. Despite all this surface cynicism, however, the anxieties of the play's youthful lovers will be recognized by many (KSR)
Description from Shakespeare on Screen : an International Filmography and Videography by Kenneth S. Rothwell and Annabelle Henkin Melzer. ©1990 Kenneth S. Rothwell. Cited by permission. — Added 2008-11-14
Cast Overview
Production Team and Crew Overview
Production information courtesy of: Kenneth Rothwell